Come walk with me in the peak Autumn beauty of the Northwoods. To say that I love this time of year is an understatement. Most everyone can appreciate the colorful falling leaves---it reveals the 'true self' of a tree when its leaves are no longer producing chlorophyll. Their true colors are revealed, and there is something simple … [Read More...]
The Community Feeder
When snow covers the ground, the feeders become the community center for the birds in the area. They have feeding times when activity is high–swooping in, grabbing a seed, flying away. The black-capped chickadees flit to a nearby branch to peck open the seed covering and swallow the seed. The noisy blue jay will pick at his seed in the feeder after scaring all the other birds away. Woodpeckers, like the Red-bellied woodpecker, often carry their food away to store in the cracks and crevices of trees and fence posts for a later time. The ‘Zebraback’, with its barred black and white wings and back, has a creamy buff underside that covers the red patch on the lower abdomen. The female (above) has a red nape and patch at the base of the beak, while the male (below) has a red crown and nape.
It was a bitterly cold day when the male visited the feeder. His feathers were all fluffed up, and he looked like he was wearing a fur coat!
Along with seeds from annuals and perennials, the red-bellied woodpecker also eats wood-boring beetles, grasshoppers, spiders, acorns, pine nuts, and fruit. They have a barbed tongue and sticky saliva that makes it easier to catch their prey.
This small Downy woodpecker is another frequent flier to the community feeder. When he flew to the tree, he may have been storing the seed in the crevice of the bark or may have placed it there to hold as he pecked it open.
Another tree-clinging bird is the White-breasted nuthatch. It is often seen creeping headfirst down a tree trunk, enabling it to store food in crevices and to find food that right-side up birds might miss.
But the birds are not the only ones in the community that come to the feeders. The squirrels show off their acrobatic skills by scaling the trees and climbing or jumping to the food source. The new mailbox feeder is becoming the favorite for the little nutkins–it is closer to their oak trees, easier to climb, and has less of a chance that the big black dog will chase them away from it.
Yesterday morning we had more visitors enjoying some black oil sunflower seeds.
There were four in all, and they watched me through the window and got a little nervous about being so close to the house. Their winter coats gave them rounded haunches, thick necks, and jowly faces.
They ate some seeds, then wandered and grazed their way back to the woods
The beautifully feathered birds come to the community feeder in the winter, because it’s all about the food. Each has specialized physiology that enables them to search, find, and eat the food that is best for them. In the snow-covered months of fall and winter, it is hard for the birds and other animals to find sufficient food, so the seed-laden feeders provide an oasis for them. In this week of Thanksgiving and abundant food for most of us, please remember the ones who are having a harder time providing adequate food for their families. Let us all give thanks for our blessings and bless the givers who provide an oasis for those in need.
Gleanings from October
October is the month we get serious about winter. Though it starts off relatively green and warm, it ends with killing frosts and leafless trees. We had a glorious blast of color throughout the month, however; it was one of the best years in memory! Asters and mums dominated the floral landscape of this transition month.
But the crown of glory goes to the deciduous trees as they stopped production of chlorophyll and let their colors shine through. The maples and oaks were spectacular this year with just the right combination of moisture, temperature, and wind to allow for a splendid show.
Seed production and dispersal is ongoing in its quiet and less showy manner. The lollipop balls of purple allium dry and rattle in the wind, and the tiny, black seeds dislodge and fall to the ground.
The winged seeds of the Amur maple hang clustered together among the fiery leaves and remain for a while longer after the leaves fall.
The white, delicate Queen Anne’s Lace flower closes as it dries and each seed is encased in a stickery covering, ready to hitch a ride on the fur of a passing animal.
The seedhead of Queen of the Prairie turns a rosy red before drying and flaking off the paper-thin seedpods.
The reproductive process of the fern starts with the production of spores instead of seeds. Dotted casings full of spores can be seen on the underside of the leaf.
The animals also prepare for winter. This pair of spring fawns, now without their mother, filled their bellies with apples that had fallen from the tree.
For the squirrels, it was a bad acorn year, so they are happy to try out the new bird feeder.
The turkeys also discovered the birdseed that had fallen from a feeder in the front yard.
October means leaf raking, tree watering, and perennial pruning. The potatoes and carrots are dug, the apples are picked and the apple butter made. Bird houses are put away and the feeders are hung up. Small evergreens are wrapped in burlap. Tree guards are put on small trunks. Clay pots of spent annuals are cleaned out and put in the shed. Pots of oak seedlings are covered with straw. There’s still more to be done.
The reason we do so much work each October is two-fold. First off, you don’t mess with Old Man Winter in Central Minnesota. There are no guarantees that the extreme temperatures and drying winds won’t kill the trees and perennials that we have planted, so we help the best way we can. Ironically, the snow cover is beneficial for the plants, but makes life harder for the wild animals to find food. They need to be prepared by storing fat and having a sheltered place to live. Secondly, much of what we do is because of stewardship. We appreciate and love the natural world and believe it is our responsibility to care for our small piece of it. So as Nature has given us a spectacular show of Fall color, as the seeds for next year’s plants have been dispersed, and as the animals prepare for their cold, harsh season, we work hard to protect, prepare, and care for the creation around us. After all, it’s what we all do for the things in life we love.
Gleanings from September
September has flown by it seems. These are the last weeks of summer and the introduction to fall. There is the scare of frost that pushes one to fling bed sheets over potted annuals and tender basil and tomato plants because we cannot bear to see their darkened, wilted leaves just yet. Later, we resign ourselves to its inevitability–but that is an October state of mind. We want to hang on to the warmth and jubilant growth and production of summer–even as we see the reverse process going on right before our eyes–the cooling, turning, falling, and wilting.
Bees still feed on sedum flowers, though not with the busy energy of playing children. They are placid and slow in the coolness.
A Buck moth–so named because it emerges during the rutting season of whitetail bucks–clings to the prairie grass at St. John’s Arboretum. It looks as if it wears a warm fur coat to get it through its short, egg-laying Autumn life.
One afternoon as I walked out our driveway, I looked up at the top of a dead spruce tree. Birds perched like Christmas ornaments on its branches. Most of them flew away before I got a good look at them with the camera, but I discovered they were Cedar waxwings.
Another visitor to the dead spruce was a Northern flicker, stout of body and bill with the red nape of its Woodpecker family. It’s one of the only woodpeckers to feed on the ground and to migrate from its northern areas.
In September we saw some of our frequent yard visitors mature into young adulthood. The small, spotted, twin fawns now looked muscular with thick coats, and I had a feeling of sadness to think of them in the sight of a gun instead of my camera.
The young turkeys, once scurrying balls of feathers, were indistinguishable from the adult females who wrangled them around all summer. Their feathers shone in the sunlight with the diverse markings and rich copper, brown, and bronze colors of the adult bird.
I carried out an amphibian rescue from the deep egress window well on the northeast side of our house after our Black lab would run to it and peer over the edge at the critters who had inadvertently fallen into the abyss. Three Tiger salamanders, two Leopard frogs and a Partridge in a…..no, I mean a chubby, bumpy, brown toad.
(This one is so shimmery and pretty!)
And finally, I wanted to show you my favorite fern–Northern Maidenhair–with a whorl of lighter green fronds floating on dark, wiry stems. They grow along the shady narrow road that climbs the bluff from the bank of the Mississippi River at Cassville, Wisconsin to the cemetery where Chris’ folks are buried. That’s the first place I remember seeing them. These grew where the woods and the wetlands merged at St. John’s Arboretum. My attempt to establish them at our place has met with disappointment, as our hilltop sandy soil drained away the moisture they require. But I’m not giving up yet–Chris has a project going that may be the solution to my problem….
It is human nature to not want to let go of the things in life we love or that give us pleasure. Summer is a pleasurable time in Minnesota, a time we do not take for granted. It is short and sweet, and we want to hold on to that sweetness. But the night temperatures fall into the thirties, the colorful, fallen leaves cover the green grass, the produce from the garden is mostly all harvested, and the denial of what’s coming is getting pried away by reality. We get out our warmer clothes that have been put aside, not even put away, and we start to make our mental list of things that need to be done before winter. We rescue what we can, and with loving appreciation we let go and give the other up to God. We move on to our October state of mind.
Happy 1st Day of Fall
Happy 1st day of Fall to all of you! It is a beautiful autumn day–clear blue sky, bright sunshine, cool temperature, and a tapestry of orange, red, yellow and green leaves. It is the season for picking apples, making apple butter, drinking apple cider, choosing pumpkins, carving jack-o-lanterns, raking leaves, and running through a corn maze. It is harvest time for the farmers, closing time for the cabins and camps that have housed a summer of delightful fun, and hunting time for those who carry a bow or gun for sport or to put food on the table.
Over the weekend, our yard was a wildlife paradise of sorts, as the deer grazed through the delectable offerings one evening and the posse of almost fully grown turkeys swept through the yard at midday with flapping wings and watchful eyes.
The sumac is in all its glory–the understory to yellow-leaved ash and poplars.
We met up with Aaron at St. John’s Arboretum yesterday for a spectacular walk through the woods. The maple leaves glowed against the dark trunks and branches on trees so lofty it took my breath away.
Fallen leaves lined the path through the woods and decorated the ferns and wood nettles with bright spots of color.
Fall is the between season. Most of us do not want to see the end of summer as we wonder how it could have slipped away so quickly. And we regret that things we wanted to do were left undone. Some of us are beginning the dread of winter–few in Minnesota complain that winter isn’t long enough! But in between those wishes to go back to the warmth and the not wanting to go forward to the bitter cold is this cool spot in the timeline. We may end the season of Fall in a blanket of snow, but the beginning is spectacular, and we have many weeks before us of warm days, cool nights, great color, and autumn treasures. Enjoy!
Burs and Horse Tails
The fawn came into the yard in the middle of the day–we didn’t see her twin or the doe. We had just been outside and had the water hose dripping at the base of the crabapple tree. She checked out the hose, the flat football that was left in the yard by the dog on her last retrieve, and the round, brown flax seeds in the flower garden before she wandered back to the woods. I noticed that she was covered by sticky burs on her withers, shoulder, flank, and tail. Anybody who has spent time hiking in the woods or prairies will know what it feels like to have some uninvited guests–cleavers, tick trefoil, or spanish needles–attach themselves to your pant leg, socks, or shoelaces. It’s annoying and bothersome–both to walk with them and try to remove them. The spotted fawn with her burs reminded me of the horse I had for more than twenty years of my life.
I bought Apples when I was fourteen years old with money I made cleaning out stalls at the neighboring horse farm. He was ten years old when I brought him home–a little red roan with a beautiful head, short ears, a red tuft forelock, and a long, full tail. That tail was a cocklebur magnet! He would come up from the pasture in the fall with his tail looking like a brown plank of wood–a prickly, sticky mess. So I would catch him, tie him up, get out a hunting knife and begin the slow, tedious job of removing each bur. It would be so matted with the burs that I would ‘saw’ through the hair of his tail with the knife to loosen sections, then pull the cockleburs out in clumps or one by one. None of this could have felt good to him, but he trusted me and calmly stood there until his tail was back to its free-flowing and foot-shorter state.
My morning walks take me past an open plot that despite its yearly mowing is sort of wild. This cocklebur plant was missed by the mower and bloomed purple as the burs started forming.
Cocklebur is a broad-leaved annual with rough triangular leaves. It can grow up to six feet tall on stout, spreading stems. The plants are toxic to pigs, cattle, sheep, horses, and fowls when at the seedling stage. Each plant can produce hundreds of burs.
The fruit is covered by strong, hooked spines and contains two seeds.
As nasty as cockleburs are, they were the inspiration for a Swiss engineer named Georges de Mestral in 1941. When he and his dog were out walking in the woods and came home with these burs on them, de Mestral looked at them under a microscope. He saw the hundreds of hooks that attached so easily to fur and fibers. Over the next years, he developed the hook and loop in nylon and called it Velcro!
Often in life we find something has ‘stuck’ on us without us being aware of how it happened. We walk around carrying it. It can be painful moving forward. We don’t know how to get rid of it. How in the world did this happen? We either learn to live with it until it falls away with time or we have a kind helper who lends a hand to untangle things. And sometimes, the very thing that clung to us and caused us pain is transformed into a new and wonderful creation.